


Purification & Ritual

by bree_black



Series: You Sure Clean Up Nice [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Between Seasons/Series, Ficlet, Gift Fic, Hugs, Incest, M/M, Season/Series 08, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 18:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bree_black/pseuds/bree_black
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh my god,” Sam gasps as Dean lets go of him. “Oh my god, you need a shower.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purification & Ritual

**Author's Note:**

> For country_bee, roommate and corruption partner in crime, who requested Sam/Dean. Beta'd by GwendolynD.
> 
> Part of the "You Sure Clean Up Nice" series, a multi-pairing set of standalone ficlets written for my VanCon roommates based on (non-spoilery) things we heard at convention. Each set hypothetically in early S8, and for some reason each about grooming and personal hygeine?

When they find each other again, the first thing Dean does is hug Sam. It’s a the best feeling in the world to have his brother's arms - warm, solid, _alive_ \- wrapped around him.

It’s also pretty disgusting.

Dean is covered - from head to toe - in filth. He’s caked in reddish brown mud so thick it cracks when he moves, flaking off around his joints like peeling paint. Here and there, debris sticks out of this coating - sticks, burrs, dead leaves. There’s more grass on Dean’s head than hair.

The aroma he emits is definitely makes the list of Top 5 Worst Smells Sam Has Ever Encountered, which is saying something. The smell is how Sam knew someone - or something - had broken into his apartment in the first place. It’s sweet and sour and bitter all at once, making Sam’s eyes water and his mouth go dry. Most of it is the mud or whatever, but Sam also suspects that underneath all that Dean is wearing the same clothes he’d been wearing when he disappeared _a full year ago._

“Oh my god,” Sam gasps as Dean lets go of him. “Oh my god, you need a shower.”

Dean laughs, loud and just a touch hysterical. “I know, right? I had to steal a car to get here. Almost got caught, but I swear to god the cops just didn’t want to come near my stench.”

“Why didn’t you stop to take a shower?” Sam asks, but before he finishes the question he knows the answer. Soulless Sam - Sam still doesn’t think of that guy as himself - had taken his sweet time getting in touch with Dean after arriving back on Earth, and Dean wasn’t going to repeat that mistake.

Dean shrugs. “I just wanted you to have a taste of my life for the past year, I guess. Delicious, isn’t it?”

Sam shakes his head, takes a deep breath and holds it, then takes Dean firmly by the arm and drags him to his basement apartment’s tiny bathroom.

At the door, he’s not sure if it’s he or Dean who hesitates first. The only parts of Dean’s body not caked in mud are his eyeballs and his mouth, which makes it almost comical how Dean bites his lip in uncertainty.

“Stay with me?” Dean asks.

The requests knocks the wind out of Sam nearly as hard as Dean’s hug had, but he nods. Inside the tiny bathroom Dean turns the shower on full blast, and Sam sits on the closed lid of the toilet. Though there’s no one else in his apartment to see them, Sam closes the door.

It had started out innocently enough, when they were kids. After Dean broke down and told Sam that there really _might_ be monsters in his closet, he’d understandably developed a nasty fear of the dark and of being alone. And on nights when Dad was away, he’d become convinced something was going to attack him while Dean showered, the sound of Sam’s screams drowned out by the running water. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal to ask Dean if he could sit in the bathroom while Dean showered. Sam just perched on the toilet and chattered about his day at school through the curtain while Dean washed his hair.

A temporary coping mechanism became a habit over the years. Sam can’t remember the first time it happened, but soon enough he was regularly sitting still as a statue and fascinated, listening while Dean did what most teenage boys do in the shower.

They’d grown out of it, eventually, childhood naivete giving way to the shame and self-consciousness of adulthood. As a substitution Dean had started leaving the bathroom door open a crack when he showered, so that he could hear if Sam called for him. But it wasn’t the same thing at all. They both knew the shower ritual hadn’t been about Sam’s fear for a very long time.

Now, Dean steps into the shower fully clothed. Honestly, he probably couldn’t have found his shirt buttons under all that mud, anyway. He tilts his head back under the stream of water, sighing in an almost obscene way that gives Sam a perverse sense of deja vu. Sam looks down at his socks.

“Ew,” Dean says a moment later. “The dirty water looks like sewage.”

It actually smells a bit like sewage in here, now that Sam thinks of it. The air circulation is less than ideal.

“Well use some soap or something,” Sam suggests.

Dean shuffles bottles around in the shower, then scoffs. “ _Cucumber melon_ body wash, Sammy? Really?”

Sam smirks. “I don’t think you’re in a position to criticize the way _I_ smell right now,” he says.

“Fair enough,” Dean admits. The lid of the bottle snaps open, and soon enough the bathroom smells like melon-tinted sewage.

“I think this is worse,” Sam says after a minute, and Dean bursts out laughing. The sound echoes around him, and it makes Sam feel safer than he has in years.

The bathroom fills with steam, and soon enough Dean throws his soaked-through jeans, shirt, and underwear over the curtain so they land practically on Sam’s lap with a squishing sound.

“Gross,” Sam says, shoving the clothes into the corner. No laundry detergent in the world will make them come clean.

But the smell is lessening, the forces of cucumber-melon making some headway against a year spent in Purgatory. Dean hums softly under his breath as he lathers his hair for the third time, rinses, then repeats yet again.

“Almost ready,” Dean says, and yeah, the only lingering smell comes from the pile of ruined clothes.

“You’re nearly fit to interact with humanity,” Sam says.

“I’ve missed that,” Dean says, keeping his voice light. “Hey Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“I had a lot of time to think while I was down there. About what’s really important, and what I would do if I ever got back here.”

The conversational turn startles Sam. He hasn’t exactly been thinking about philosophical realizations. “And?” he finally says.

“And the water’s still warm if you want to join me.”


End file.
